Episode 2: Resistance Training with Steve Bechtel

Photo by Kyle Duba

In Episode 2 of The Power Company Podcast, I sit down with Steve Bechtel at his gym in Lander, Wyoming, to talk resistance training for climbers.  Yes, lifting weights.  No, you won't get swole.  Yes, you should do it.  But enough of that.  Just listen.  We've already recorded two more hours with Steve, so you'll hear more from him in the coming months!

You can find Steve at ClimbStrong.

Episode 3?  It could happen!  This thing could be official!

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Kris Hampton  00:00

 What's up, everybody? I'm your host, Kris Hampton. And welcome to Episode Two of the Power Company Climbing Podcast brought to you by powercompanyclimbing.com. We're also on Facebook. We're on Instagram. We're now on Pinterest. I don't even know what that means. But we're there. So go check us out on those platforms, wherever you inhabit the interwebs. Hopefully we're there. So go check us out. I am sitting here in sunny but absolutely freezing. Cincinnati, Ohio. It's three degrees today. I am not at all excited for that. Not an ice climber, will most likely never be an ice climber. Yeah, three degrees. No bueno. That sounds like gym temps to me. Yeah, so last time you heard from me I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee trying to get some some pebble wrestling done. And I had set V10, kind of as my random bouldering goal. Just sounded hard. And my first V10 went down pretty quickly now that I've focused on bouldering for a few months. And so I'm psyched about that, and just gonna have to set bigger goals, I guess. But I'm trying to get after this bouldering stuff. Now, while I'm, you know, I'm 41 years old, not getting any younger, it's gonna get harder and harder for me to gain more strength, more power. So I'm trying to get after it right now. I'm also going to be doing some big walling, hopefully soon. That's another one of my big goals, kind of the two extremes of rock climbing as opposed to sport climbing, which is kind of the sissy middle. Sorry, but it's just true. Alright, I suppose we should get into this thing. My fiance tells me I ramble too much. So I'm going to try to cut that off. And I mean, I've only done a couple of these things. So how does she know I ramble? For God's sakes. Anyway, today we are talking with Steve Bechtel, who is a good friend of mine, I definitely consider Steve a mentor and look up to what he's done and his ideas. If you don't know about Steve, or if you haven't heard from Steve before, you can definitely check out his interviews with Neely over at Training Beta. Her last one, the second one with Steve, was really great. So definitely check that one out. Steve owns a training facility in Lander, Wyoming called "Elemental Performance and Fitness" and I spent quite a bit of time there this past summer while rehabbing my shoulder. Got to know Steve a little better. He's also the owner of Climb Strong, and you can find him at climbstrong.com. He is a certified strength and conditioning specialist. He has a degree in exercise physiology from the University of Wyoming. He's also an SFG Level 2 Kettlebell instructor, a weightlifting coach with USA weightlifting, and a USA cycling elite level coach, and he's worked with USA triathlon for 15 years as a certified coach with them. So he knows what he's talking about. And more sports than just climbing. So I appreciate that. I sat with Steve in his gym, in his office and the fluorescent lights caused a whole bunch of noise issues, which I didn't know until I listened back. I couldn't hear it in the headphones for some reason. So at any rate, I did lots of cleaning up of the audio, I hope it works out, you're just gonna have to forgive me because I've got three hours of Steve, this is only one of them. You'll be hearing the other two later on. And if I had to guess I would say that those two hours aren't the only that you'll hear from Steve. I really appreciate Steve's no nonsense approach to training and to life in general. So I would guess that we'll be sitting down having more conversations or podversations or whatever these things are in the future. Okay, I'm rambling. Let's get into this thing. Resistance training for climbers with Steve Bechtel.

Steve Bechtel  04:26

"Those seem to be missing the marks so far that, that I would be delighted and surprised to find any athlete that comes out of there that has actually improved in the sport." My name is Steve Bechtel. I am...

Kris Hampton  04:52

 You're, you're great, great. Steve Bechtel is great... All right. So let's start with resistance training for rock climbing specifically. A couple of... one of the reasons I want to talk about it is because several years ago, I wrote on my blog a hypertrophy post: hypertrophy and strength training for climbing. And I failed in the topic to mention that it was all resistance training and wasn't going to be about hang boarding or heavy finger rolls or something like that. And there was all sorts of backlash. "We don't want to hear about weightlifting," you know. But it seems like now, the tides are shifting a little bit. And, you know, deadlifting got really popular and people are starting to look more into it, which is exciting. And as far as I know, you're probably the, you know, the foremost expert on it. From what I can tell. So well, good to hear your perspective on it. 

Steve Bechtel  06:01

Yeah. My, my background is in exercise science. And so I came up through college studying methods of improving athleticism. And one of the reasons I got into that at all was because I was interested in getting better at climbing. But you start studying lots and lots of sports, you start to see the similarities in athletic development. And one of the things that that we see straight across the board with top performing athletes, no matter what the sport, is that they do supplemental resistance training. Sure. And if it's badminton, if it's pool, if it's golf, today's top performers are doing some sort of supplemental training. Where where it gets confusing is that climbers look at it as bodybuilding, right? People look at it, and they say, Oh, yeah, well, I don't want to get huge. Well, I've got enough experience with these athletes to tell you that it is not easy to get big. Yeah, exactly. And these guys that, you know, that are out in the gym right now work their tails off to put on sizes and very frequently it doesn't work.

Kris Hampton  07:27

Yeah. Not to mention you have to eat a ton.

Steve Bechtel  07:30

Yeah. Well, that's, that's a really interesting thing. Like, if you look simply at anabolic and catabolic nutrition, you, you've got to put on, put on a lot more calories to put on mass. And so when we, when we're dealing with people that are interested in fat loss, we say you need to weight train to lose fat. They're like, Oh, man, I, I don't want to get any bigger. Well, right. I will tell these people, if you eat the way I'm telling you to eat, and you train with weights, you're not going to gain any mass. But if you're cheating on your diet, and you're eating too much, you may. And so it's it sort of reinforces that, like, watch what you're eating sort of thing.

Kris Hampton  08:16

Yeah, for sure.

Steve Bechtel  08:19

And so when we look at at strength training, and I know you and I are on the same page, is we we say it's strength training for climbing, we occasionally use weights as tools. We also use hang boards, system walls, whatever else, but the whole idea is increasing the ability to generate force. Exactly. And so sometimes weights are the best tools for that. And also, when we talk about strength training, we're talking about doing the minimum amount necessary to improve the performance of the athlete. And so we're not talking sacrificing massive amounts of climbing time. One of the things I really am adamant about is that 75% of your training or your time should be spent practicing the sport because it is such a skill based sport. So then that gives us 25% of your weekly training time to put in all your hangboard, all your weight training, campusing, and really, I kinda have this funny way of of dividing those up, but I say, you know, 75% of your time should be with your climbing shoes on. And then 25% should be you know, barefoot or in running shoes, you know, like weight training, hangboard, etc.

Kris Hampton  09:40

Do you think that's across the board? From you know, where, when do you get to that 75/25 split and do you go beyond it into a 50/50? Or? 

Steve Bechtel  09:51

Um, I think it would depend a lot, and all these questions would, right? But I think it would depend a lot on on what the availability of climbing and training is for that person, right? For example, you have somebody that does massive, massive mileage and can climb all the time. It may be a little less than that. And we start saying, Okay, can you can you resistance train 20 minutes, two times a week, you know, and then maybe they climb six days a week, that might work out. Or if you're, you know, in Ohio, and you have this long, cold winter, you're not going to be out on the rock that often.

Kris Hampton  10:32

Yeah, maybe never.

Steve Bechtel  10:33

And so, and so, so maybe it does creep back up to that 50/50. But I think that, that always honing the skills, always addressing continuing to be a good climber, will will take precedence. And, and we've seen that, you know, both you and I have as coaches where the training becomes the sport for people. Absolutely. And they they lose, they lose sight of the original intent.

Kris Hampton  11:05

Yeah, and I've really had to watch some of my athletes with that, because particularly one of my trainers, Sara, she's, she's very strong and predisposed to put on mass. So and she loves to workout, you know, because she's strong, because she's good at it. And, and it becomes the end game for her pretty quickly. Yeah, I have to really watch that and hold her back and get her you know, climbing more. 

Steve Bechtel  11:33

Yeah. And we, you know, you'll lose athletes to to the campus board, yeah, to high intensity group training, you know, CrossFit style stuff. Because I think for two reasons: one, there's an excitement level to it. And anytime that something gets really tough, and you start to plateau, or your your ability starts to dip, it's it's easy to look elsewhere, and say, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, like my climbing has been stuck at 12a forever, I need to do something else to stimulate that excitement. Again, we don't do it consciously, but we go like, "Huh, it would be more fun to get good at campusing," or, or whatever, instead of bearing down and saying, like, "Wow, I've really got to work on my footwork, I've got to really put the hours in," we go, "Oh, let's let's make a lateral move to a different, a different style of training."

Kris Hampton  12:27

Yeah, and I find that a lot of people really love the more exact measurement you can get out of resistance training, or, or campusing, or hang boarding or CrossFit or whatever, you can measure your progress quite a bit better than you can by the, you know, the grades in a gym that are all over the place.

Steve Bechtel  12:48

Right? Well, and so that is an interesting thing we say: in a performance sport, improvement is measured by performance. And and it's, that's hard to do, because you say like, oh, is every 12a the same, is every 13a the same? Of course it's not. But are we getting better? And so those metrics are attractive, and I think they're critical, but they need to stay in the background in the training zone. Yeah, you know, right. Tiger Woods, you know, was a fabulously strong athlete when he was coming through college, but it was never in his mind about how much he could benchpress right? It was it was, you know, am I improving my game?

Kris Hampton  13:28

Am I golfing better?

Steve Bechtel  13:29

Yeah. And so I think that's, I think that's one of the things people fall into Kris, is they, they'll get to a point in their training, where the, the feeling of what happens in a session is, is more important than then what they actually did. And what we'll say is that fitness is a result of what you did in the session, not how it felt. We talked about this the other day, where you might have gotten to the top of your hardest redpoint ever and felt like wow, I could just keep climbing. Right. You know, I felt awesome on that, it felt easy and you hear this a lot: people report being in that flow state and and just crushing the hardest thing they ever did. Likewise, you can get the beat down on a route that's relatively easy for you and you don't go home and go man, what an awesome session that was. I got just worked from it.

Kris Hampton  14:24

That can happen in the same day.

Steve Bechtel  14:25

Yeah. And so what we want to do is not go like "Man, I puked at the end of that workout. I must be getting better." Right? You know, what you need to look at is those metrics and how do we, how do we crawl forward through this this long journey of strength?

Kris Hampton  14:42

Now, do you think that there are people who, you know skipping over any injury concerns or health concern thing like that, are there people who shouldn't be resistance training for climbing?

Steve Bechtel  15:00

I think that you need to take a good look at yourself as a climber and say, "Where am I developmentally behind?" You know, and Steve Maisch has a really great chart on his website. I think it's stevemaischtraining.com. Yeah, I think it is. And he kind of gives you these three levels of where you should be able to do pull ups, how much you can hold on this little edge, how much you can do a pinch, pinch grip deadlift with. And I'm not saying it's the world's most perfect chart, and neither is he. But it's a really great place to start. Because you can say, "Oh, my gosh, I am so bad at this particular thing, that this might be holding me back,". I'll give you an example. There are guys that will be bench pressing, like crazy. And they'll they'll hit a plateau say they get stuck at a 300 pound bench, right. And if you can take them out of the bench mode, and put them on a cycle of pull ups for a little while to develop that antagonist, all of a sudden that bench number goes up. And I think that that is true the same way with rock climbers that if we have a fundamentally imbalanced body, neural inhibition will keep us from getting stronger. Sure, whether it's in, you know, in your legs, if your if your hamstrings are so weak, and this happens with cyclists, if your hamstrings are so weak, the quad starts being inhibited, so that we don't create an injury there. And so I think if we have a fairly balanced athlete, maybe they can get away without resistance training. Another thing, and I thought this was really interesting, I was talking with a coach in Salt Lake named Mark Twight, who's a well known trainer and is helping us. And he observed that beginners should be resistance training just to develop basic strength. And the highly advanced need to be resistance training, just because that might be one of their only ways forward, is to develop basic power and strength. But in the middle, you know, the people that are climbing pretty well, still seeing some improvement there, and they've been climbing a few years, they might get away without resistance training for several years. And it's probably like you and I did it, you know, through the intermediate parts of our career.

Kris Hampton  17:31

Yeah, there were definitely years where I thought... I had a background in resistance training, though it was more bodybuilding style, you know, high school, that kind of stuff. That's how I was introduced to it. But I had that background, and I was already strong physically so, so for a long time, I did skip it. And that's where I think you really, that's where I think it becomes even harder to be honest with yourself. But even more important, is, after you've put your finger on your weakness, and you've worked on it, you then have to reassess, you know, try to figure out what's now your weakness. It's not hard to turn your weakness into your strength. Yeah. And for me, that was: my body's not as strong as it used to be, for me to gain more power, I have to gain more strength. And neurally, I need to jumpstart my system so that I can gain power. Yeah, you know, so I had to go back to resistance training. I just, there's really no other option. I think a lot of people skip out on that.

Steve Bechtel  18:41

Well, I think that it's an interesting thing, because we go right to strength is the ability to hold on to the holds and make the moves. And if I can do that I'm strong enough. But what's really fascinating is, the kinetic chain gets very, very weak out at the extremes. And that's, that's the only place we operate. That's the only place we're connected to the rock is our fingertips and our toes. Right. And you just cannot generate gigantic force there. A great example is, you know, can you do the same max number of pull ups hanging from monos as you can holding on to the bar, right? And the answer is no. And that answer is no for everybody. Yeah. And so what we want to be able to do is neurologically develop strength, or improve recruitment is the way we talk about it, right. And you can do that with heavy resistance training, but you can't do it with even the hardest bouldering. And so especially as as people get older, over age... really like over age 21, like your testosterone starts to drop off and everything else. But when you're in your 30's and your 40's and you're still trying to perform, we really need to have that testosterone, growth hormone, all of all of the the enzymatic reactions that take place with heavy resistance training, and it doesn't take a lot of volume. I think if you did two sets of two heavy squats, a couple of days a week, you're going to be way ahead on on all of these factors compared to somebody that's not that's not lifting at all.

Kris Hampton  20:20

Yeah, that brings me to another interesting question. Like I mentioned, I was kind of brought into resistance training through bodybuilding. And I find that that the, you know, three sets of 10 rule that that seemed to be the rule in 1991, for me, somehow has become the rule everywhere. And if you just leave people to their own devices, they automatically go to three sets of 10. Is there a way that you - other than just telling people: this is what you have to do -  is there a way that you can convince your athletes to, that two sets of two is even effective? Because a lot of people that I talked to, are like, well, that's gonna do nothing.

Steve Bechtel  21:11

Yeah. Well, that's an interesting thing. I advised a climber earlier this year, and I sent him a program and I had him doing five, five reps of push ups. And I said, push up progression five repetitions. And he's like, well, I can do five push ups, right? Yeah. They said, Okay, well, then just do them with one arm. And he's like, Oh, well, I can't do that. And so he's drawn this line at what he can and can't do. But there there is a progression in there. Like, we can do an incline single arm push up, we could do a declined two arm push up. And, and so that, yeah, the three sets of 10 thing is really fascinating. And it's been around and it's become pervasive. But really, what we look for is generally about 10 reps per workout, of a hard, of a hard activity. And so that can be three sets of three, it can be two sets of five, it can be 5,3, 2. But in, in general, that's about about where you want to be. If you complete all the reps easily, and you felt like you had a little more in the tank, add a little bit of weight. And when we start talking about adding weight, I think that's where people start losing it. Like when you go, I want you to do five sets of two deadlifts, and they go in and they put, you know, 95 pounds on the bar, and they walk out of the gym, and they felt like it was a waste of time. Well, it might have been, but you know, we have athletes, female athletes that are deadlifting a lot. There's a like our gym manager here, Shelby, she can pull maybe 415 on a deadlift. Very strong, right. But it started out, the first session I did with her, we had her doing bodyweight squats to normal bench. We did two sets of five, and she was sore for days. First workout. And so there's a lot a lot of time to progress up. But I think one of the things is get into a situation where you can go with somebody else that's really lifting and learn the progressions and the regressions on those, you know, right? Goblet squat, two rack squat, two front squats, you know.

Kris Hampton  23:26

And learn to warm up properly, especially if you're doing two sets of two, yeah, you know, you don't just... When you're doing three sets of 10, it's easier to warm up in five minutes, and go right into it. Yeah. Doing two sets of two, your movement prep has to be considerably better. Yeah. So that you can pull that heavy weight for two reps.

Steve Bechtel  23:51

Well, and that's, that's the really fascinating thing, a lot of our workouts will be an hour long, but with, you know, half a dozen real heavy sets and they're towards the end, with a lot of time for mobility and stretching in between. Which is which is interesting, because that takes us back to feeling that it was really, really hard. And and the easiest way to explain this to climbers is like, go try to do a V10. You know, you're not gonna get pumped on it, right? You're gonna like, try it, and you're gonna fall on your back, and then try it again...

Kris Hampton  24:26

On the wall only a couple of seconds...

Steve Bechtel  24:28

Exactly, but you're getting way stronger and and you're not pumped, you're not puking, you're not breathing hard. But that's what we're trying to develop in the weight room is, you know, this neurological overload. And it takes a long time to get the get the feel for it. But, but I think that over time, it's gonna it's going to benefit us especially... Yeah, yeah, we're getting injury prevention and we're getting a little bit stronger, but the the main thing is, is what's happening hormonally and neurologically, and that's going to benefit you in the long run as a climber.

Kris Hampton  25:05

Yeah, and I think you just said something really important that we haven't really touched on. And that's that you need to get the feel of it. And that, that means you're not going right into the gym and throwing heavy weights around immediately. You know, I've had several athletes that, that don't, have never lifted weights, you know, they, they know nothing about it. So for several cycles, they're not doing any maximal lifts, you know, they're not, they're not trying super hard on their lifts, what they're trying to do is really dial in the form, really groove the movements that they're having to go through and getting comfortable under weight. You know, I have definitely worked with some girls who are just not comfortable lifting at first, are there any tricks to, for lack of a better word, to speed up that process, that you use to help people kind of groove the movements?

Steve Bechtel  26:04

Well, for sure. And one of the things is to reduce the number of movements that you have to learn. We have a limited amount of adaptation potential. And so if you're trying to do a different workout every day, or if you're trying to do all kinds of different exercises, you start to adapt to nothing, because the, each of the adaptations you're making is so small. Imagine reading 10 books at the same time, you're going to read one page of this one, switch, read one page in this one, it's very hard to follow what's going on there. And so we reduce it down. And it used to be you know, you read Arnold's Encyclopedia of modern bodybuilding. And you do like nine different exercises for your biceps. Right, exactly. Yeah. And, and we know that doesn't work except for bodybuilding. And so we look at, at whittling it down to the, to these basic movement patterns. Alan Cosgrove has a great general set of movement patterns. And it's it's nine movement patterns. But, and you can probably fit those all within within one workout. But if you take it back, and you go down to like four or five, you know, and, and the ones we've talked about, you know, press, whole hip hinge squat, and then like a core movement, right? So if we had five exercises that you were working on, for an entire four week phase, you're going to start dialing those in pretty well. So to learn a pattern, you got to remember that skill degrades with fatigue. And so we keep the reps low. Anything that you can do for 10 reps, I would do for only five. And so you would work on a basic bodyweight squat or a goblet squat for the squatting pattern for the hip hinge movement, probably a really very light deadlift until you get the movement. I love kettlebell swings, but you need good instruction for those because we've got to make sure you're doing them correctly as a hip hinge. The pressing, I love overhead press for climbers because their shoulder mobility is so terrible, and it tends to light up the the movement pattern better than like a regular push up does, right. And then for pulling, you know, starting with something very basic, like an inverted row or even a dumbbell row. And then let them master that movement, get very good at that movement, and then slowly progress load. But really, you do the basic movements, and you haven't ever done those, it's going to take you you know, a good four to six week cycle just to just to adapt to that.

Kris Hampton  28:52

Now do you... I'm a fan also of all the movements you just mentioned. Do you ever find that it's advantageous to mimic climbing movements even further? Or are you mostly looking for that neural adaptation you get from those basic movements?  Well, you know, it was it was really interesting early on, we we would do those things, you'd go like "this, this exercise seems to be like climbing," like, like pull ups or, or climbing up a Bachar ladder or whatever. And those those are beneficial, but for the most part, in going back to that 75/25, very rarely do I have people that aren't climbing during that time. And so we'll try to to fudge it a little bit on the systems board or on the campus board and say like okay, we're gonna mimic climbing here. Or, like with our, we have a gal that's training for the mixed climbing competitions. And so we'll have her do offset pull ups on her tools, or things like that. But for the most part, that's, that's real, minimal stuff. And I think it's interesting, where you have some of these gyms that have sort of tried to blend CrossFit and, and climbing into these, like, kick your butt via a climbing movement. Right. And, and those seem to be missing the marks so far that I would be delighted and surprised to find any athlete that comes out of there that's actually improved in the sport, because you take massive amounts of fatigue and marry that with with skill training. And we tend to tend to see a regression in ability rather than a progress. Yeah, I agree. And I've read studies on baseball players and golfers swinging with weighted clubs, and across the board, their their performance goes down, rather than up like you would think. And I think it's the same thing when you start really trying to add weight to climbing movements, you know. And I'm, I'm not, I've not ever been a fan really of wearing a weight vest or a weight belt while climbing unless you have absolutely impeccable technique. It's just going to screw up your movement patterns. And I'd rather see people get that strength in the weight room. Yep. And then apply it to climbing without resistance.

Steve Bechtel  31:41

I think you're right on and, and there is certainly, it makes the climbing harder to wear a weight vest and you know, you've, you've climbed with a big rack on before and you need a shoes hanging from your harness and it does change the game. But I think that we we undervalue that neurological skill required, and the timing and all those sorts of things. And going right back to, you know, weighted basketballs and whatever else. Let's build a new movement pattern where we're developing strength, and then continue to refine our movement pattern out there on the rock, on climb, under the conditions we always climb under. I think, you know, a little bit of weight on the hang board is not a big deal, because we're not really moving. If you're doing a couple of movements on a system wall, it might be okay. I don't know. I couldn't take it but weighted campus board training might might be okay. But yeah, throwing the weight vest or the weight belt on, it changes the center of gravity of your body. Which, again, is is probably of dubious value when you're trying to develop motor patterns. You know, imagine throwing a weight vest on and jumping on your skateboard. Right? It's not gonna end well.

Kris Hampton  33:13

Just a kind of a side note, have you ever thought about, and I've toyed with this idea, though I haven't put it into action, have you ever thought about using like power bands for campusing where they're attached to the floor and to the, you know, the athlete's waist and doing plyometrics so that as they come down, the weight, the load lessens, and then it increases the load on them as they explode upward?

Steve Bechtel  33:39

Yeah, that that's interesting. We've we've used that the bands on, you know, bench presses and jumps and things with with, you know, non non-climbing athletes, right. We've also used them on pull ups for for increasing the resistance at the very top, right, the range of motion of the bands are actually a bad idea to help you do a pull up. We don't we don't really do that anymore. We used to. But but yeah, that that is really interesting. And I think if if the athlete can can handle it, that's probably gonna be pretty effective.

Kris Hampton  34:18

Definitely have to be a pretty experienced athlete. Yeah, I don't even recommend plyometric type campusing until they're pretty experienced advanced climbers to begin with.

Steve Bechtel  34:29

Yeah. And it's interesting, even like, I've been looking at some stuff on on explosiveness and and, you know, there's this whole thing that came out maybe in the mid 90's, called complex training where you would do weighted strength movement, followed by an explosive movement. Well, it's interesting because a few people replicated the study, and so it sort of became law. And then over the last few years, people have been going well, what if we do them in separate workouts? We do a morning strength workout and afternoon explosive workout. So, not back to back, not back to back, not even in the same session. And they're seeing even better results there. And so that was that was an interesting, interesting revelation. And it's not like one was better than the other. But the combination, depending how you put it together, it might not just be like, complex training is the way to go. But But another thing along with that explosiveness is, how do we, like the the negative or coming down on the campus board, is where most of the injuries occur, right? Same thing on like box jumps, is like jumping down off the boxes, is where where the injuries occur. And so a lot of that, like, you know, if you had a band on the floor, you know, harness on the climber, three moves up, and then have them jump down. If you could figure out a way to do that safely without the elastic messing you up. I, you may, you may get something there. But again, we're talking at the very, very limit of somebody's ability.

Kris Hampton  36:04

Elite campusing essentially.

Steve Bechtel  36:06

Well, and and that sort of leads us to another thing, like, I've done these articles where you'd say, like, novice, intermediate, and advanced program,

Kris Hampton  36:16

I just just wrote one on campusing. With, all these programs that are... 

Steve Bechtel  36:20

Right, and nobody wants to do the novice program. 

Kris Hampton  36:22

You're right, you're exactly right. 

Steve Bechtel  36:24

But you should do the novice program, because it's almost always the least prescriptive. And it's the most flexible, and like, you know, if you could get away with just going rock climbing, do that. Yeah. Then move to the next level program, then move to the next level program. Because when you start having to put a band on to do, you know, three, move campus thing, and then you have to go over and you're doing, you know, trap bar, deadlifts, and whatever else just to make yourself 1% better, you know, then we're in a very complicated game that's very hard to stick to.

Kris Hampton  37:02

Yeah, good point. And I've actually found that with girls, it's considerably easier to get them to do, particularly campusing, to get them to do the novice beginner campus workout. Because they're scared of it. They've heard about how easy it is to injure yourself on a campus board. And, and they want to start lower, it's harder for me to get them to try harder on a campus board. Guys, however, it's the exact opposite. Most of the time, I'm generalizing here, but I find that ego plays a huge role in getting yourself injured on a campus board as well as it would in the weight room.

Steve Bechtel  37:44

Sure. Well, it's interesting. I, I heard, I talked to a ER doc, a few years ago, and he said, you know, it's really interesting, when people come in with snake bites, women that come in will have a snake bite on their lower leg or the calf, and men will have a snake bite on their arm. Because the guy thinks he can grab the snake, right? Yes. And and that that happens, you know, like, we'll, you'll always see ego coming into play. And in in a lot of ways, I think that that, that can be beneficial, like on a, you know, "a muerte"  training session, the guy's going hard, whatever. But, but more often than not like, especially when we're just trying to grind through strength stuff, it's so much better to like, check your ego at the door. Yeah, go through your movements. You know, net rule number one: don't get hurt.

Kris Hampton  38:46

Right? Exactly. If you get hurt training, that's a big time fail.

Steve Bechtel  38:50

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  38:51

So last question, for resistance training. How do you, generally speaking, how would you suggest programming in resistance training? Are you, would you rather see it done all in one phase of your training program? Or should it be something that's continued? All the way through your training and even into the season? Do you continue resistance training while you're in your climbing season?

Steve Bechtel  39:24

Um, it depends on the athlete, but it's not necessarily at that individual. And what I mean by that is, very young athletes that can handle the workload should do so. Female athletes should resistance train all the time, and male athletes over 30 should resistance train all the time. Yep. Now, the dosage or the amount of that that you do per training cycle should should go up and down. But if you have a training program that says we're going to train strength for four weeks, and then you're going to leave the weight room and all strength training for the next, you know, six to eight weeks while you focus on climbing, that athlete is not going to get stronger over time. And what we really want is his long term athletic development. And so we'll, we'll back strength off to very minimal amounts, but, but we'll maybe stick with those, you know, the four or five basic movement patterns and drop them to very, very low volume. So let me let me give you an example. You, you know, offseason, you know, maybe you do real intense strength build three days a week, we're really trying to get somewhere. And, and that that might be, you know, up to five sets of activity, maybe an hour long session, but we can pepper that in with other training. Like, I think combining it with hangboard training is a really good way to go. And doing it the day after a bouldering session or even in the same day as a bouldering session but afterward, is a is a valid way to set it up.

Kris Hampton  41:19

I find that tends to be the easiest for busy people.

Steve Bechtel  41:24

Mm hmm.

Kris Hampton  41:24

You know, working people who can only get to the gym three times per week, I generally try to have them do you know, some... either either I split it up into two movements per day, or do a few sets of all four movements per day, you know, after their bouldering.

Steve Bechtel  41:42

Yes. And and I think that, I think it's like the way I like to have people do hang board training, it works out really well because because we don't time the rests. Well, here's the thing, if you're if you're timing the rest, you've left the realm of strength training, because strength training is all about initial initiating intensity. And so if you have any amount of, of like, I got to only stand here for 30 seconds, you're no longer in the in that zone. And you can still get strong doing those much like you can on like the DeLorme's three sets of 10, you can still see strength gains there. But it's not ideal. And so, you know, if you do like hang on an edge, and then you go out and you do a set of squats, and then you go hang on the edge again, that's, you're still gonna see valid strength progress there. But it really does depend on what your facility allows, a lot of people have to have two gym memberships, because their climbing gym doesn't have a weight room. But I think that's changing because the climbing gyms are starting to see that it's not just entertainment. And they do have people that are serious about training. And we've seen that in a lot of the facilities that have opened over the last couple of years.

Kris Hampton  42:58

Yeah, speaking of facilities, I've been in your gym for, you know, every other day or more for the last week or so, working on my shoulder and, and I'm really impressed by your gym. Immediately, I was impressed by it. Because there aren't a ton of machines, there aren't a whole bunch of implements. It's pretty stripped down and basic. And, and functional. And I would love to know if you have specific implements that you that you would have climbers use, if they had availability, with whatever, they could have whatever they wanted, what are the best implements for them to have? 

Steve Bechtel  43:44

Well, you know, bodyweight training is always, always a great option. And I think it's a really interesting thing. And they've done some of these studies where they would have guys do pull ups, versus doing pull downs, at the exact same load. So say you weigh 200 pounds. And you do, and this was a bodybuilding study, I think they had him doing five sets of 12. So you know, big, big, big volume, five sets of 12 pull ups, or five sets of 12 at body weight. And the guys doing pull downs, we're putting on mass, and the guys doing pull ups, we're not, and so we can see more of this neurological stuff is probably happening with the body. Maybe even the body knows that it's moving itself through space. It's a little beyond what we what we're aware of now.

Kris Hampton  44:36

There's more stability involved.

Steve Bechtel  44:37

Yeah. And and so like the bodyweight stuff is really valuable. I think, you know, pull up bars and those sorts of things are are you know, even like the fitness centers you'll see out in a park? Awesome, those things are really cool. But um, yeah, free weights are great and, and I'm a big fan of of kettlebells. And it's an interesting thing, kettlebells are, they're popping up everywhere. And they're looking to be more and more used by the by the average athletic population, just because they do a really cool thing. Because of the offset nature of the weight, it forces you to use more balance and core for any given movement. So if it's a swing or a goblet squat or a press, you know, especially for for us climbers that have terrible shoulder mobility, the fact that the weight is held on the back of the arm for an overhead press, helps us stretch out as we as we press up. And those sorts of things and the inefficiency of the movement, make make the kettlebells a really nice tool for climbers. There's also an interesting thing we do with the dynamic kettlebell exercises that's an explosive movement to an isometric hold. Like if you can picture kettlebell snatch or kettlebell cleans. And that nature is similar to how we climb you know: explode, hold an isometric, explode, hold an isometric. And so I think there's a little bit of crossover there in the in our metabolic specificity. And so those are those are cool tools. And they're, they're fairly cheap. And you can get a couple of them for your garage gym which is pretty neat. One of one of the athletes, I coach has a garage gym, and he's got a set of bumper plates, a barbell, and maybe half a dozen kettlebells. And it's like, the best gym in his area. Yeah. Because that's because you can simplify the tools and and then you complicate the movement to make up for that instead of having a room full of Nautilus machines.

Kris Hampton  46:54

Yeah. And that brings me to another thought. We talked about this the other day, I had read an article, and you're a fan of this as well, I believe it was Dan John article, or in a podcast, something that he talked about when he was making these huge gains in strength, he had two weights to work with. It wasn't, he didn't, he couldn't add a quarter pound every week, or, you know, he couldn't add a few pounds when he felt a little stronger. Yeah, it was he had a few weights to work with. And I think that's important to note, when you're looking at kettlebells, is you don't have to have, you know, a 40, a 42 and a half, a 45, whatever, right. You can go straight from 40 to 50. Or even straight from 40 to 45. Or, or straight from 40 to 60, or whatever, depending on what your budget allows you. You don't have to spend tons of money to get every single weight along the way.

Steve Bechtel  47:52

Right. And then it just becomes a tactical thing. And it's interesting, because people go, "Well, how do I get better?" you know, and we see that with bench, people will micromanage the benchpress, we have these one and a quarter pound weights down there, right. And so now my bench max is, you know, 227 and a half. And now I can do 228 and a quarter or whatever. But but you're exactly right, and what we have to do is just get smarter, like build volume at that lower load until you can move the higher load. And we've had these really great results with people working out at loads about 75% of their max. And they just keep building volume and keep building volume and keep building volume and until they, you know, can do 30, 40, 50 repetitions at that 75% level. Then we go and we test max and their max has gone through the roof without them having to push that hard. Yeah. And I really like that for rock climbers. Because if I can have you deadlifting 300 instead of trying to push 400 every time you're up, right, um, that means that I'm going to have a much stronger, healthier athlete, and I'm not pushing against that limit where you, where you may get hurt. Yeah. Because like you said, if we get hurt training, you know, the coach blew it, but that athlete also blew it.

Kris Hampton  49:12

Yeah. Yeah. What....have you ever used a protocol like that with hang boarding?

Steve Bechtel  49:21

Yeah, you know, the hangboard protocol I like the best we call we call ladders. And we will have an athlete hang an edge for three seconds, then rest as long as they want to. Then the next set, they'll do six seconds, then rest as long as they want to, then nine seconds. It's always the same load and always the same hold. And so when you're doing the three and the six second edge hangs, you're, you're under stimulated. It's it's easier than you can do, right. The nine second one starts to be difficult, but then we add more rounds of that, rather than trying to add load, because like managing load on those, like changing weights and whatever else, is, is frustrating for most people. And what I what I want is a is a hangboard program that's going to show effective results that you'll keep doing, and that you're not going to get tired on. And that's what we see with so many of the hangboard plans people do with a lot of added load is they end up taking time out of their season, because they just went a little too far on pushing that load. So you can ladder up, and I'll have you stay at the same load all the way through a training cycle four weeks of, you know, only five pounds on your on your harness. And we see, you know, measurable and substantial gains in strength. They're interesting.

Kris Hampton  50:46

Is there a point where the volume gets so much that you would say, okay, you're, you can do, you can handle this weight really well, let's go ahead and move the weight up?

Steve Bechtel  50:56

Yeah. And usually after about four weeks of that, of cycling up in these, we'll do a total time under tension. And you've used that in your program I'm sure where you go 3-6-9, that's 18 seconds. Sure, once we get up to about 90 seconds in a given session, and like I said, I give you I'll give you all day to do that, it doesn't really matter. Because what's happening is, it's happening on a micro structural level, you know, in the connective tissue. And, and though, and neurologically, we don't see a lot of gain and strength come from greater muscle size in the forearm. I mean, it just didn't happen. And so once you get up to about 90 seconds of hanging on a on a given hold, yeah, you own that thing. Let's move up a little bit, let's go five pounds. But we have to remember that strength is a persistent factor. And so we train it at a low level at all times, and it slowly improves over that time, the steeper we try to incline that, the steeper the downside is going to be and so I'd rather see it slowly build up over a long, long period of time.

Kris Hampton  52:06

Where... how do you pick a starting point for that protocol? 

Steve Bechtel  52:11

Yeah, I'd say I'd say start with that edge that you can hang, or hold position you can hang, for 15 seconds with bodyweight. Yeah, or, you know, like, say it's a, you know, 18 millimeter edge, and you can hang it with 10 pounds on for 15 seconds, that's a good place to start. Sure. But what I want is for you to, to cash it in, it's like brushing your teeth, like, you know, you're not gonna go in there and just like brush the living shit out of your teeth, right? You know, you're gonna go in there and you're gonna get the job done. So that, you know, 10 years from now your teeth are in better shape than they are now. And this is the same thing we want to do with your fingers. I don't know what the numbers are like, you know, there's some super smart people out there, Eva Lopez and Dave MacLeod, for example. But I know that connective tissue adapts much more slowly than muscle. And some people say seven times slower. But have some patience. Because if, you know, and especially if, you're not 15, you know, it's way better to undertrained by 5% than to overtrain by 1%. 

Kris Hampton  53:14

Yeah, absolutely. And you said something else really important. And that's that the best program is the one you're going to stick to. Yeah, and I think that's really important to point out, because it's so easy with all this information out there. And here I am just adding to the problem, you know, the more and more information. It's really easy to complicate your training cycle.

Steve Bechtel  53:38

Yeah.

Kris Hampton  53:38

And try to do way too much. So I think you really have to be honest with yourself about your time and your motivation and, and your resources, for sure. And, you know, create a program that you're going to be able to stick to week after week after week.

Steve Bechtel  53:53

Yeah. And I think the thing is, is try to follow it through, you know, like any program that you don't complete in its entirety, you don't know whether it worked or not. And so I think four weeks is a really great, somewhere between four and six weeks, adaptations start to plateau for almost everything, right? And so do four week cycles, that makes it really easy or one month cycles. And you say like, Okay, I'm gonna do deadlift benchpress and pull ups for four weeks, I'm going to track those numbers. Let's see what happens. You know, that's going to be my weight training. I'm going to do you know.... They, Eva Lopez has this really great hangboard program if people aren't aware of it, where she alternates between these four week cycles, right? And, and, really, I mean, it's a really great thing and, you know, allows you to see some adaptation that cycles into a different type of adaptation. And, like we were talking the other day, it's not like they're is one program that's better than the other. And if you, you know, like, let's go back to resistance training, these superduper power lifters, they have tried hundreds of different programs over the years. And so, you know, whether it's my ladder program or Eva's program, or, you know, the, the Metolius hangboard program, right? There's probably validity to every single one of them, depending where you are in your in your climbing, but follow it through, do the whole program, and then adjust.

Kris Hampton  55:31

Yeah, I think that's really important. Yeah, anything you want to say about resistance training that we haven't already talked about? Before we wrap this up?

Steve Bechtel  55:42

I think that it's, it's important to, and we sort of covered it, but just to just to go back over, it's important to start conservative, it's important to remember that strength is a skill, and that you really do need to learn how to do it. You know, going to YouTube University is, is a dubious event, you know, sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's bad.

Kris Hampton  56:06

There's a lot of bad information.

Steve Bechtel  56:08

But, um, but so, you know, do your research. And, gosh, instead of adding more stuff, add more depth in the things you know how to do well, you know, because there's a, there's a whole world of learning to be done with with good squatting or good dead lifting or learning to press correctly. And I would say stick with those really basic things until you feel like you've mastered them, then move on to something a little bit more complicated.

Kris Hampton  56:35

Yeah, that's, that's perfect advice. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate it. 

Steve Bechtel  56:40

Yeah, appreciate you putting together the work.

Kris Hampton  56:45

Yeah, so I have nothing to add to that. Steve pretty much said it all. Which is great. Because then I don't have to do a whole lot of talking. I can just put this thing out for you guys. And ramble because my fiance hates it. Anyway, you can find Steve at climbstrong.com, you can find me at powercompanyclimbing.com. Find us on Facebook, find us on Instagram, find us on Pinterest. Just find it.